The busyness of the start of term in September gradually turns into the marking marathon that is October and November, and the silence of my blog in those months is testimony to how the hours of my days and evenings have been taken up with course preparations and grading, grading, grading. I was just reading a post by another professor who has calculated how many words she writes in student feedback — read it here or take my word for it — it’s a lot! My situation is similar. Although I love teaching, I do get restless after a while when I have to spend time away from my research. A few more weeks of marking will take care of this term, but in the meantime the best that I can do is to track a few new books on Tolkien so that I can look forward to reading them and eventually getting back to my research.

Right now, Palgrave Macmillan is having a 50% off sale until November 27th. Their books are expensive, so this is a good time to grab one if you can. I’m particularly interested in Tolkien and Alterity, edited by Chris Vaccaro and Yvette Kisor. According to the publisher’s blurb, the book “examines racialized, gender, and queer dynamics in The Lord of the Rings, The Silmarillion and other works by Tolkien to arrive at an understanding of how alterity functions in those texts.”

The volume opens with two bibliographical essays, one on “Queer Tolkien” by Yvette Kisor and one on “Race in Tolkien Studies” by Robin Reid. Both of these should be extremely valuable for anyone doing research in these areas. I haven’t read the book yet, but just taking a look at the table of contents and the nine other essays by well-known Tolkien scholars tells me I need to read this volume! Here is the table of contents from the Palgrave site:

The Orcs and the Others: Familiarity as Estrangement in The Lord of the Rings. Verlyn Flieger

Silmarils and Obsession: The Undoing of Fëanor. Melissa Ruth Arul

The Other as Kolbítr: Tolkien’s Faramir and Éowyn as Alfred and Æthelflæd. John Holmes

Palgrave has a list of other valuable Tolkien books; check out all their offerings here.

Another essential collection for Tolkien researchers is Wayne Hammond and Christina Scull’s J.R.R.Tolkien Companion and Guide. First published in 2006, this three-volume set has been extensively updated and added to in a second edition forthcoming from HarperCollins. Hammond and Scull explain the changes in the second edition in their blog posts here and here. My local bookseller tells me that the set should be available in December. No discounts on these very expensive volumes, but I’m expecting them to appear under our Christmas tree all wrapped up.

Here’s a new book coming in December that I definitely will be buying, a new collection of Verlyn Flieger’s essays on Tolkien, to be published by Kent State UP: “There Would Always Be a Fairy Tale”: Essays on Tolkien’s Middle-earth. This would complement an earlier collection of Professor Flieger’s essays in Green Suns and Faerie: Essays on J.R.R. Tolkien. It’s much easier to consult the work of one of the foremost Tolkien scholars of our day in one or two volumes rather than tracking down decades of essays in various sources. In addition, the publisher’s site states that some of the essays have been slightly revised to update them or eliminate repetition.

Finally, here’s a book from Walking Tree Press just published a couple of months ago: Julian Eilmann’s J.R.R. Tolkien: Romanticist and Poet. Eilmann has previously edited a volume of essays on Tolkien’s poetry which I found very useful, and now this is his monograph that views Tolkien in the light of nineteenth and early twentieth-century Romanticism. I’m very interested in Tolkien’s poetry, but my research focus is mainly on Tolkien’s debt to Old English alliterative verse. This book promises to take me beyond my current interests to give me a different perspective on Tolkien’s work.

I’m looking forward to our December break and a month of intense reading. Obviously, this post is about books that I haven’t yet seen (and no, no one has asked or paid me to promote their books!). For proper book reviews, you should check out the open-access, peer-reviewed Journal of Tolkien Research, which includes a book review section. If you have access to a library database or subscription to the journal Tolkien Studies, you can also read book reviews and the “Year’s Work in Tolkien Studies” there. The peer-reviewed journal Mythlore, devoted to the Inklings and mythopoeic literature, also includes book reviews. This journal is available through library or individual subscriptions, but a recent welcome development is that past articles and reviews are also available online, though with an embargo on the most recently published work.

Happy reading and research, everyone! Let me know in the comments about any other new books you’re interested in reading.

The Popular Culture Association national conference is just around the corner. After a successful trial run of Tolkien Studies as a special area last year, the organizers have included Tolkien Studies as a regular topic in the annual program. This year features another packed program, once again organized by Robin Reid.

The conference will be held in New Orleans from April 1 – 4. The Tolkien sessions are all on Friday, April 3, with a business meeting on April 4. If you’re interested, you can join the Facebook group, “Tolkien Studies at Popular Culture/American Culture Association” and/or read my summary of a couple of roundtables last year here and here. And please note that the list of panels below is subject to change — if you plan to go, always check the official program to make sure you have accurate and updated information. As you can see, the Tolkien Studies sessions occupy a whole day, but if you’re around for the rest of the conference, there’s a huge range of other sessions on popular culture to take in.

Tolkien in Vermont is a conference that is now heading into its twelfth year. A call for papers has been posted recently by the organizer, Chris Vaccaro, who promises that details about the conference will appear soon on the Tolkien in Vermont website. The CFP is copied below, or you can find it here.

I’ve always found this conference to be a small and friendly gathering where you can meet and mingle with all of the participants — students, fans, independent scholars, faculty alike. This year’s keynote speaker, in keeping with the conference theme of medieval verse narratives, is Michael Drout.

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Call for papers:

April 10-11Tolkien in Vermont conferenceUniversity of VermontBurlington, VT

The theme for this year is Medieval Verse Narratives. Papers on every subject will be considered; however, the following subjects will be prioritized: Beowulf, The Fall of Arthur, Sigurd and Gudrun, Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, The Pearl, and Sir Orfeo.

Please submit an abstract or (preferably) a complete paper by Sunday, February 1st. Decisions will follow swiftly thereafter. Papers should be ten pages in length.

We are very excited to announce that Michael Drout (Professor, Wheaton College) will be this year’s keynote speaker!

In my previous post, I wrote about one of the roundtable discussions in the Tolkien Studies special area introduced this year at the national Popular Culture / American Culture Association conference, which was held in Chicago in April. Today I have a summary of another roundtable discussion, this one on doing research in the Tolkien archives at Marquette University in Milwaukee. Because I was one of the panellists, I didn’t take as copious notes as I might have done as an audience member, but at least I can give you a taste of the discussion. My part will look disproportionately longer than the others, but that’s because I have notes on my own presentation!

The Tolkien Collection in the Marquette University Archives

It is not unusual to be met with surprise if you happen to mention that there’s a Tolkien archive – in Milwaukee. Many people assume that all of Tolkien’s manuscripts would be held at the Bodleian Library in Oxford. And while the Bodleian has a rich collection of Tolkien papers – such as his lecture notes, drafts of some of his fiction, translations and glossaries for his teaching – the J.R.R. Tolkien Collection at Marquette University is where you will find his Lord of the Rings and Hobbit manuscripts, as well as Farmer Giles of Ham and the original Mr. Bliss.

Our roundtable started off with William (Bill) Fliss, the Archivist in the Department of Special Collections, describing the history and scope of this collection, starting with William Ready, the head librarian in the 1950s who was the first to inquire if Tolkien would sell his literary papers, which is probably one of the reasons why they ended up at Marquette. Bill also pointed out that the collection extends beyond these manuscripts to secondary sources, including materials donated by Tolkien collectors. To get a full sense of these diverse materials, take a look at the online descriptive inventory. Another interesting development is that it is now possible to record various Tolkien-related websites so that they too will become part of the historical record.

Amy Amendt-Raduege spoke next about her experiences as a Marquette grad student — the first in the history of the English Department there to complete a PhD on Tolkien – and the many happy hours she spent in the archives. Amy pointed out that the archives are a lovely place to work (and they are: large tables, a wall of windows, and a place of quiet concentration with librarians bringing riches to your desk). She commented on how it was fun to see other people there occasionally working on other aspects of Tolkien’s fiction, creating a sense of a scholarly community. She advised researchers to ask the librarians for help when needed, as they are the most valuable resource in the archives. She also described the thrill of looking at the manuscripts themselves – something that all the panellists agreed with. You can read Tolkien’s drafts of Lord of the Rings in The History of Middle-earth, but only in looking at the manuscripts will you see, for example, the other side of the page, with Tolkien’s comments on exams, or his doodles, or other notes that give you a sense of what he was doing at the time. And of course, there is the challenge of reading his handwriting when he was especially inspired.

While Amy spoke about reading the manuscripts, I pointed to various topics that could be pursued in a study of pre-internet Tolkien fandom using the vast array of periodicals, fan materials, and adaptations collected in the secondary sources. There is great potential there for fan studies, film studies, and reception studies by examining how, through the years, fans have expressed their ideas and opinions in numerous zines on topics such as the following:

fans’ perceptions of what it means to be a fan;

the beginnings of organized Tolkien fandom in science fiction fandom and the perceived relationships between these two fan communities;

the perceived relationship between fans engaging in activities for fun and those developing more serious academic interests as time goes on;

the prevalence of fan works – fiction, art, poetry, songs, plays – from the earliest days of fan publications, without derogatory comments on fanfic such as you might find today;

the way in which women were writing Lord of the Rings fiction from female points of view;

the various ways in which the collection supports film studies – for example, tracking fan reactions to the Ralph Bakshi film, or reading the Ackerman screen treatment (with Tolkien’s comments in the margins), or imagining John Boorman’s screenplay (if only it had been filmed!), or reading fans’ anticipations of what a live-action film by some guy named Peter Jackson might be like.

and finally, looking at the ways in which fans perceived the Lord of the Rings “cult” in the 1960s and 70s when Tolkien fandom was highly visible. Essays on the subject extend from early days in the 60s to retrospectives in the 1980s. An interesting range of opinions can be found, from conservative to liberal, as these zine article titles might suggest: “Hippie Hobbits”; “Hippies or Hobbits?”; “Hippies versus Hobbits”; “Hippies relating to hobbits”; “On Behalf of the Half Hippy” and “Those hippity hobbits.” (Clearly, the alliteration was too much to resist).

These suggestions by no means exhaust the possibilities of the secondary materials in the Marquette collection, but I hope they make clear that the history of organized Tolkien fandom is to be found in the archive in Milwaukee. I should add that I was commenting on North American and British sources, but other materials from around the world can also be found in the collection.

Our final panellist was Richard West. He spoke of his long experiences and happy memories of discovering and using the Tolkien Collection over the years. He reiterated what Amy had said earlier: that there is nothing like looking at the actual manuscripts. Richard told the story of seeing Mr. Bliss and thinking that it was a lovely book that should be published, and of course it eventually was. He also spoke about how being able to consult manuscripts can complete the printed record: for example, in the published edition of Tolkien’s famous Letter 131 to Milton Waldman, Carpenter omits a small section, but it can be read in the original document in the collection.

I think the theme of our roundtable could be summed up simply by saying that the Marquette Tolkien Collection is an invaluable resource that all Tolkien researchers should know about.

If you’ve used the collection, I’d be interested in hearing about your experiences in the comments. If you were at our roundtable and have other notes to add, please feel free.

Areas of interest for future conferences

As I mentioned in my previous post, you can keep in touch by joining the Tolkien Studies at PCA open Facebook group. There you will find a report by organizer Robin Reid on the success of this trial run of the Tolkien Studies area. After a business meeting on the final day of the conference, participants identified a few areas of interest for future meetings that emphasized the multidisciplinary nature of Tolkien studies, including discussions of publishing opportunities and the state of Tolkien scholarship; teaching Tolkien; Tolkien linguistics; critical race studies; gender and queer studies; Tolkien in a modern context, including his knowledge of science and his relation to the genres of science fiction and fantasy; and creative presentations.

The next national PCA/ACA conference will be held in New Orleans in 2015.